Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Aviation fans--SR-71

Did you see that The President has reactivated the Lancers?
Reuters has an interesting article under investigative reports...

On a more thread centric note, has anyone read "Mayday"?

No, I haven’t.

I also have not read “mayday”.... now I’m interested.......

No , they’re retired. The SR71’s gig was too high and too fast to intercept. Modern SAMs can reach up and hit the SR71 making it obsolete The U2 on the other hand is high and slow with a long loiter time. The U2 can’t overfly any country with even semi modern air defenses but it can stand off very high and peer over the border for a long time. The U2 is still useful but the SR71 is a suicide mission.

Also..... if your talking stealth and fire power........ a trident sub trumps all imho.

Those birds are bad ass and sexy as hell but.......

I don’t know....... freakin bird is fast. Many stories of it out running missiles
High alt, spy......cmon.

Bad ass plane. Period.

VG, no doubt this was the same show noted in my earlier post. At the time, they (AF) told us (the Rotary Club) that it was the first public on-ground show for that airplane. Yes, it did leak when sitting on the tarmac - quite a bit. And, yes, the next day take off was a thrill. The fellow I know now was the pilot that trip.

Twas stationed at RAF Mildenhall from '75 to '78. Habu, U-2 and a couple of variants of the RC-135 flew missions out of moldyhole. While I didn't work the SAC side we shared the maintenance channel on our radios. We also had a status board in our flightline truck in case we had to assist them in an emergency. So we knew when the KC-Qs were being readied for SR-71 support missions. The SR took over our phase hangar when they were in town. Of course I always had a reason to pay a visit to our phase crew... 😛

The other issue they ran into is frame fatigue. The plane is mostly titanium which fatigues quickly under the expansion and contraction of the heating the SR71 is subject to. As they aged they were subject to cracking.

One of the reasons they had to hit a tanker soon after launch. Get the airplane airborne and heat her up for the leaks to seal, hit tankers to fill her up.

Altitude.......

Always loved the look of the SR-71.

There is one at Wright-Pat AFB museum and I am drawn to it when ever I have been to that museum. I wish I had seen the plane in action before it was retired. But I missed out on that.

Funny thing is, we have a guy that opened up a small engine repair shop in our little town. Go in there last year with a wheeler to be worked on and there are a couple pics of SR-71s and some other stuff on the walls. Certificates or something. Turns out this guy was a mechanic on the SR-71 for years. Now he is fixing dirtbikes and mowers.

Spooky bitch huh

And today's satellites do the job much better and much cheaper than the SR 71 can.

Powers, dulles, Eisenhower, the summit, and the role of satellites all factor into " Mayday"

At up to 44,000 lbs per hour fuel consumption, the Blackbird topped off soon after rotation, again after she crossed the Atlantic, and again after running the recon mission, before crossing the Atlantic for home. She carried enough fuel for about 90 minutes flight time.

With the need to slow down to match speeds with the tanker three times per mission, the crew spent almost as much time refueling as they did flying photo runs.

OF course, at plus/minus 3000 knots, that is still a pretty good ferry range.

Satellites are in predictable orbits and can be timed around. When the SR71 was retired years ago many people assumed there was something new to replace it, I'd bet that was a safe assumption. It might not even be another aircraft, but if the mission still exists then there's something better that took it's place. There's a lot of stuff the government has that they do a pretty good job of keeping hidden.

The Air Force transferred a couple of them to NASA after they retired them. NASA used them for research for a while.

I see there is at least one SR71 at the Boneyard at Davis Mothan Airbase

Always thought that was a cool looking plane. Can't imagine how awesome it would be to fly in it.

Remember in the late 80's or early 90's when first retired they had 12 or 15 of them parked along a fence at Edwards collecting dust... But there is still talk about a SR-72 if that's what it will be called if they ever get there, personally I don't think they are there yet.

Phil